We can live for three weeks without food, three days without water, but only three minutes without breathing, so shouldn’t that be sufficient reason to pay more attention to how we breathe?

If that were all, you might not think it worthwhile to consider how you breathe so long as you do! The truth is that poor breathing is linked to over a hundred diseases, in fact it is difficult to find any disease that would not benefit from improved breathing.

So, you don’t suffer from any ailments, not even hay fever or poor sleep and you can’t see why you should do anything about your breathing. Well you may like to improve your sports performance, your fitness, or just optimise your health and wellbeing, and unless you are among the ten percent of the population who breathe normally and well, you could also benefit from breath training.

Let’s settle the question by you checking your breathing now!
If your breathing is normal and optimal you will also have optimal oxygenation of your body and won’t need any breath training.

Sitting comfortably at rest, breathing only through your nose, take a normal breath in, and then a normal breath out and then gently hold your nose and hold your breath until you feel the need to breathe again, release your nose and breathe in through your nose. Check how many seconds you were able to hold your breath for comfortably.

You are trying to measure your maximum comfortable breath hold after exhaling, while at rest. If you had to take a deep breath in afterwards or gasp then you held too long. Try again.

If you are breathing normally, your body is so well oxygenated you should be able to comfortably hold your breath for 45 to 60 seconds. If your breathing is very poor you may have difficulty holding your breath after exhaling for any more than ten seconds. The table below shows how good your breathing is based on this simple test.

The most effective breath training has been shown to be the Buteyko Method, that usually involves a number of sessions over a few weeks of group or one-to-one training, and costs a few hundred pounds. An alternative training course over the internet still usually costs a hundred pounds or more. This may be a key reason why many people have not taken up this training, but also because good breathing is not reckoned to be important for our health in Western medicine, and doctors don’t routinely check how well you breathe.

The Buteyko Method is named after a Russian doctor who developed the training system based on a lifetime of research, studying the impact of breathing in health and disease. Professor Konstantin Buteyko wanted his work to reach as large a public as possible to improve the health of all, but to date progress has been disappointing for various reasons.

It was with this in mind that I decided to publish the entire training course in the form of a podcast that everyone, with access to a computer or smart phone, could take at no cost. I have published two versions, one is specifically for asthmatics to enable them to better manage their condition and dramatically reduce their reliance on drugs safely, and the other is for everyone who wants to improve their health with better breathing.

The first is entitled “Escape from Asthma” and the second is entitled “Better Breathing Means Better Health” which is the title of the presentation I shall be giving at the Integrative Health Convention in London this October.

So if you decide to listen to either of these podcasts you will find them on all the major platforms or just click on the titles above to take you straight to either one.

Although not essential, I have also published a companion book for revision and recording your exercises to accompany the podcast training that you can check out or buy from Lulu.com or from Amazon.co.uk in the near future. Click HERE for details.

If you like the podcasts please tell your friends. If you have any ideas for improvement please let me know.
e: lingard @totalhealthmatters.co.uk

Michael Lingard BSc. DO. WPN.Cert.
Orthopath Buteyko Educator & Plantrician

Links:
Escape from Asthma
Better Breathing Means Better Health
The Integrative Health Convention
and an Interview with Dr. Toh Wong

The Buteyko Guide to Better Breathing & Better Health